dmaze | Gaming: 1830 BC

I got a smallish mob together to play Ur: 1830 BC (manufacturer's page here, but if you don't have cookies enabled you'll only get Dutch). It's really better described as "inspired by the 18xx system" than "another 1830 variant": instead of companies building rail and operating trains over that rail, the game is about nation-states building canals and irrigating land. The way to win is to own land in a country that successfully pumps water around; owning land that actually gets irrigated is secondary, but if you control a nation-state you can decide how the water flows. The game ends when all of the water in the river is captured. Like 1830, there are five grades of digging crews and waterworks, "1", "2", "3", "4", and "M" (where "M" is infinite, just as diesels in 18xx have infinite range); unlike 1830, our game ended before the first "4" card was bought after some aggressive irrigation, and it didn't seem like the game could have been extended much beyond another round or two. In all, it was a fun game; it has the same problem as 18xx that you need to explain all of the rules before you can start, but it ran a lot quicker (we finished somewhere beyond two hours, the box says 3-4).

Since we kind of expected an 8-hour game, we followed this up with Eurorails. Which went fine, except for the part where I turned in my contracts, drew a derailment that only hit me, and followed this up by turning in my contracts again. The part at the end where I had three contracts from Spain to eastern Europe was nice. But I was half a turn away from only being 50 points behind.